


Vocational

by mystiri1



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Community: fic_promptly, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystiri1/pseuds/mystiri1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easy to dwell on the more difficult aspects of being a teacher in a Hidden Village, but Iruka knows there are rewards, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vocational

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anenko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenko/gifts).



He sees it sometimes, in the jounin-sensei: the stress, the anxiety, the guilt. The stress, because it's not easy teaching young people how to kill, how to survive. The anxiety, because if you do not teach them well enough, then they may die. The guilt, because it's inevitable that sooner or later, one of them won't come back, and you'll be left to wonder if it was something you did wrong, some lesson you failed to teach that might have made the difference between life and death.

In some ways it is worse for Iruka. Jounin-sensei have three students, while his classes can hold ten times that number. Everything they need to know out there will be based upon something they learned under his tutelage. But there are things that make it better, that make it worth it.

He gets to see them learn all the basics, sees the sense of accomplishment they feel when they succesfully take those first few steps to becoming shinobi. The pride, the joy. He sees them build upon those basic skills, learning and growing. He sees them learn other things, the skills that help them not with being shinobi, but with being people: skills that will help them through everyday life. Not just the skills of the classroom, but how to interact with others, as they laugh and play and be children on the playground outside his classroom window; how to deal with the inevitable upsets of life, both big and small.

This, Iruka thinks, is why he's quite happy to be 'just' a chuunin-sensei. The jounin-sensei will teach them many things about being shinobi, but he will teach them first. And the jounin-sensei, who gain their students half-trained and nearly-grown, will never be able see them as children playing outside in the sun, and know why it's so important to teach them about being people.


End file.
